So many conspiracy theories on coronavirus!

ALJAZEERA:

Why are there so many conspiracy theories around the coronavirus?

COVID-19 has been accompanied by a conspiracy theory outbreak, not just on social media, on mainstream outlets, too.

by Gouri Sharma

5 Mar 2020

TWO months after China first reported a deadly outbreak of a new type of coronavirus, the topic continues to dominate headlines the world over. The virus has now infected more than 95,000 people in 79 countries and killed more than 3,200.

The disease's rapid spread has been accompanied by an outbreak of false claims and conspiracy theories on social and mainstream media, allowing misinformation on the origins of the virus and hoaxes on cures to travel as fast as the infection.

One study by the US State Department, reported on by the Washington Post, said roughly two million tweets touting conspiracy theories about the virus - such as claims it was caused by a bioweapon - had been posted outside the US over the three-week period when the disease began to spread outside China.

According to Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, head of the World Health Organization (WHO), such claims hamper the effort to fight the COVID-19 outbreak.

"At WHO, we're not just battling the virus, we're also battling the trolls and conspiracy theorists that push misinformation and undermine the outbreak response," he told reporters on February 8.

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The arrest of Julian Assange

AUTHOR Jerome Corsi, who was questioned by the Mueller probe about his relationship with Wikileaks, reacts to the arrest of Julian Assange on FBN's "Trish Regan Primetime," saying the Wikileaks founder is being unjustly prosecuted.

"This is another attack on journalism," Corsi said about Assange's arrest. "in 2013 the Obama Justice Department decided not to indict Julian Assange over these Chelsea Manning issues because they said it would be tantamount to indicting the New York Times of the Washington Post. As a journalist, Julian Assange has a right to publish even stolen materials."

"The New York Times and Washington Post, in 1971, worked hand in glove with Daniel Ellsberg to get the Pentagon Papers in print. That is not a collaboration that is criminal, that is journalism, and Julian Assange is being unjustly prosecuted."

"I would recommend to Julian Assange that he fight back just like I did," Corsi said. "Julian Assange can come back and prove the second shoe dropping, the double whammy. Robert Mueller says there was no Russian collusion. Julian Assange can come back and prove that Russia was not involved in stealing the Democrats' emails. Julian Assange can come back and open up the Seth Rich case, where he has suggested time and again that there was this DNC employee who was murdered in Washington during the 2016 campaign who supplied him the emails."

"Julian Assange should do what I've done and write a book," he also said. "If Julian Assange wants to write a book and get it published we'll get it published for him. If he wants a co-author or a ghostwriter call on me. Fight back! Because Assange has information that can absolutely destroy the Russian collusion hoax. He said it from the beginning. I never talked to him, all I had to do was listen to his press conferences. He said the Russians were not involved in stealing the emails."

Posted By Tim Hains
on 'Real Clear Politics' (Date April 12, 2019)

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A Man Righteous Among the Nations

By Les May

YOU have probably never heard of Dutch schoolteacher Johan van Hulst.  I certainly had not until I read an obituary of him in the Washington Post.  Along with two colleagues he is credited with saving the lives of some 600 Jewish children who would otherwise have been sent to the death camps.  All this under the nose of the SS and knowing that if he were found out he too would be killed. That is what anti-Semitism really means.   It is part of the experience of many of our continental neighbours whose countries were occupied by the Nazis.  It is not part of our experience and it puts the ‘anti-Semitism’, which some would have us believe is rampant in the Labour party, into some kind of perspective. It also gives the lie to those people who claim the ‘The Holocaust’ was a hoax.

Both Stalin and Hitler despised Jewish people because they did not have a state of their own. Stalin deported them, Hitler murdered them.  With a history like this it is unsurprising that anyone who self identifies as Jewish will feel a close affinity with the state of Israel, the one country that is not going to deport them or murder them.

But identifying with a country is a two edged sword. It thrusts upon you a moral responsibility for that country’s actions.  On 17 March 2003 the late Robin Cook received a standing ovation from the House of Commons for his resignation speech after leaving the Cabinet in protest at the Iraq war.  Thousands of people took to the streets to voice their objections to the war.  They were people who wanted to tell Blair, and the world, ‘you do not go to war in my name’.

So the distinction between gratuitous anti-semitism and thought through anti-Zionism may begin to look a bit hazy at times.   Nonetheless the distinction is real.  Gratuitous anti-semitism on social media should not be made an excuse for not questioning the policies of the state of Israel, either by individuals or the press.   Nor should it be made an excuse for the press seeking to interfere in the internal structures of the Labour party.

It cannot have escaped notice that if Corbyn accedes to the demand that Christine Shawcroft should be suspended from the party and removed from the party’s ruling national executive committee (NEC), it will shift the balance of power between the pro- and anti-Corbyn forces.  So whilst it is not difficult to find a few dozen examples of gratuitous anti-Semitism coming from some members of the Labour party, it is also a story being whipped up mostly by MPs who have always objected to Corbyn leading the party and a press which thinks the same.

How many of the people who are so vocal about this would be willing to act like Johan van Hulst did?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/johan-van-hulst-dutch-schoolteacher-who-saved-hundreds-of-jewish-children-during-holocaust-dies-at-107/2018/03/28/cdbd44c2-31ca-11e8-94fa-32d48460b955_story.html

Cartoon from Washington Post